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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer